Today, Downing Street says the PM has given the President a less controversial present, pictures of "Churchill and Roosevelt."

At the lobby briefing where the gift was announced, I suffered some barracking for asking the PM's spokesman to clarify which Roosevelt: apparently some colleagues thought me daft to suggest that Winston could have met Theodore Roosevelt, who left the White House in 1909 and died a decade later.Â

But that underestimates the remarkable span of Churchill's career.Â Â In 1900, aged 26 but already a war hero and an MP, the young Winston toured the US giving lectures to promote a book and – as ever – make money.Â

During the tour, he encountered TR, then the president-elect.Â Â Â Perhaps unsurprisingly for two such driven, vital characters, the two did not get along famously.

I think – but am not sure – that Teddy Roosevelt was the first US president Winston ever met, while the last was Richard Nixon.Â The current incumbent takes a similar view.Â Â Â

Anyway, the pictures that GB gave Dubya were, of course, of FDR.Â So all this is irrelevant.Â But I'm glad to have got it all off my chest all the same.